Deadly virtues
by Vashtijoy
Summary: Light's story in seven drabbles. Complete.
1. Charity

The thing about most people is that their work goes unnoticed. Each of us leaves our lonely rock on the pile, and then our children do, and one day, our distant descendants wonder why they're dropping pebbles on the foothills of a mountain.

So if you're a young boy with rare gifts, and you chance on a dark power that tempts you into murder, and you're still childish enough to believe your sacrifices can save the world, it won't occur to you that some choices aren't yours to make. Why would it? _If not now, when? If not me, who?_


	2. Diligence

There's a wolf scratching at the door. Its claws are self-knowledge, and its teeth are understanding. It's two days since Light found the book.

Every night, he studies, wren-fast, then writes names until his fingers scream. He can't sleep. He picks at his food. His eyes widen and brighten as his fears and conflicts deepen. On the fourth fraught morning without sleep, blinded by the sunrise, he finally sees the shape of his calling. He's remaking the world, with a god's power, and what does that make him?

The wolf is still there, but Light can't hear it any longer.


	3. Chastity

Misa's cry of "Use me!" hits Light somewhere he needs to believe he's above - that temptation to use his power for personal gain. _I won't - I wouldn't - but I could._ He's virgin-curious, and has preferences he won't think about. (_his own eyes in the glass; his fingers in his own hair_) But other people, their jejune chatter, and the perpetual mask he'd have to wear? No.

In the end, he'll practice on Misa - though he's never certain who for - and he will use her, like tissue paper, carving a sliding scale of his affection and her loyalty into her skin.


	4. Patience

Hands clawing in grave soil, L's defeat singing in his head, Light had lost himself entirely - or had he found himself at last? The sunset was fire in the sky, but soon it faded, as they do, into the dark.

Deniability and time constraints and hateful necessity forced his power into Misa's hands, and her body into his bed, and all he had left was a desk job._ "Second Kira". It was never meant to be a franchise._ Sometimes he can still see it in the clouds, but not nearly often enough.

One day, it will all be worth it.


	5. Kindness

It's strange, how being a god can't exempt you from harsh life lessons.

How much easier would things have been, with his father off the taskforce, broken, defeated, humiliated? Rare compassion had driven Light to fight his father's decision, to argue with his choice. Now the fool is dead, and it's too late for _if only_. Matsuda should have taken the eyes. Matsuda, who always does everything Light tells him. Mello would be dead, and everything would have gone exactly as planned. Instead, Light's been cheated by his own weakness.

Necessity is Light's watchword, and every new development underscores it.


	6. Temperance

The farther out of his control things spin, the less time Light has for little things like being human. Eating, sleeping, the ruin of his family - he neglects them all for his work. His only release is the way he's gaming Takada - psychologically rather than physically, though by now that fascinates him: the way the whisper of his true name opens her legs, and how readily she swallows his lying promises of power.

Yet despite everything, he's still so close, every piece gliding to its choreographed place. The world will be his. Kira will reign from the heavens. It's inevitable.


	7. Humility

Light doesn't make mistakes. His whole life hinges on that glance from a window when he was seventeen, and yet he's so sure that he wrote the rulebook himself, that the plans and blueprints are laid out in his own handwriting. It's not until the end, when he's hanging on for dear life, that he catches a glimmer of humility - not humiliation, but true humility. As his few remaining seconds tick away like a crocodile's clock, he sees all the paths not taken, and screams his regret - not for any of the lives he's cut short, but for his own.


End file.
